by
© Caitlin Bethune
A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Department of Folklore Memorial University
August 2015
St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador
ABSTRACT
This thesis folkloristically examines a Vancouver-based storytelling night called
“Rain City Chronicles,” founded in 2009. Specifically, this thesis examines issues of the performance of truth in storytelling, as well as the folk aesthetic of the event – in
particular, what makes a “good story.” Stories at Rain City are supposed to be “true” and
“personal,” and therefore fall into the category of personal experience narratives.
Through narrative analysis and interviews of past storytellers, I determine that the most
memorable Rain City storytellers use humor, authenticity, and storytelling skill to connect
with the audience. Ultimately, I show that Rain City narratives have much in common
with contemporary legends, as well as with folktale and stand-up comedy.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have many people to thank as I submit my final draft of this thesis. First and foremost, I wish to thank my advisor, Philip Hiscock, for his guidance and infinite patience with me throughout the thesis-writing process. I also want to thank the rest of the professors in the Folklore Department at Memorial University, all of whom have at some point provided me with encouragement, ideas, or sources that I needed. Martin Lovelace, Jillian Gould, Cory Thorne, Diane Tye, Jerry Pocius, Paul Smith, Holly Everett, and Mariya Lesiv: thank you for your support! To my colleagues: Thank you Joey Donnelly, Brittany Roberts, Jenny Tarof (Burns), Meghann Jack, Ben Staple, Laura Sanchini, Dana Kroos, Matthias Kom, Cynthia Egan, Noah Morritt, and Claire
MacDougall for keeping me calm, brainstorming, and sharing your strategies along the
way. Thank you to my informants for sharing your time and your thoughts with me – I
appreciate your openness, and the phenomenal ideas you shared with me. And finally,
thank you to my family and friends for putting up with a lot of fuss from me over the past
three years. Thank you to Keely Bethune, Wendy Hogg, and Gretchen Whetham for
helping me to reconceptualize my thesis when I needed to change my focus; thank you to
Erica Ross for making me laugh on rough days; thank you to my parents Darrell and
Cheryl Bethune, for encouraging me to get my thesis done; thank you to everyone in my
church family who prayed (and prayed) for me; and thank you to Timothy Matwey for
loving me no matter how slowly I write. I am blessed to be surrounded by so many kind
and patient people!
Finally, this final version of the thesis owes a debt to the kind and helpful comments by two final examining readers, Ian Brodie of Cape Breton University and Diane Tye of Memorial University.
Funding for my research was generously provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as by the School of Graduate
Studies (SGS) at Memorial University.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS...iv
List of Figures ...1
List of Appendices ...2
Chapter One: Introduction, Methodology, and Terms...3
The Personal Experience Narrative genre...11
The Contemporary Legend genre ...14
Authenticity: Not a folklorist’s favorite word...18
Authenticity: Current Understandings ...23
Methodology ...26
Chapter Two: "If it doesn't exist, create it"...32
Structure of a show ...41
Rain City Chronicles: Highlights and Lowlights...54
All of which is to say ...62
Chapter Three: A Good Story: Podcast Analysis ...64
Standardized opening/closing phrases ...66
Setting or Framing the story...78
A Moral ...80
Smiling self-ridicule/humility ...82
Chapter Four: A Good Story: The Folk Aesthetic ...85
A word on genre classification...88
Story as Tale: The importance of structure and traditionality ...93
Story as Stand-up Comedy: The importance of humor, relatability, and audience connection..98
Authentic stories vs. authentic stand-up ...100
Story as Contemporary Legend: The Importance of Truth...104
Chapter Five: Personal voice, constructed identity, and being heard. ...113
Identity and Belonging...118
Chapter Six: Conclusion ...125
Appendix One: Fieldwork material ...128
Appendix Two: Podcast material...129
Appendix Three: Storytelling Tips by Karen Pinchin ...131
References...132
List of Figures
Fig. 1: Poster for the first Rain City show...7
Fig. 2: Poster for the “Family Matters” show...8
Fig. 3: Poster for the “Under the Influence” show...43
Fig. 4: Rain City bulletin (front of page)...45
Fig. 5: Rain City bulletin (back of page)...46
List of Appendices
Appendix One: Fieldwork material ...128
Appendix Two: Podcast material...129
Appendix Three: Storytelling Tips by Karen Pinchin ...131
Chapter One: Introduction, Methodology, and Terms
Cloth pennants loop across a simple stage. A lone microphone stands under a warm spotlight. Christmas lights criss-cross the ceiling, casting a friendly glow, while audience members pack together like sardines in a tin. The room is dim, cozy, and thrumming with anticipation. Later, a girl with orange hair will take the stage and tell the halting story of her experience with an online predator. This is Rain City Chronicles.
Rain City Chronicles is a storytelling night founded by Karen Pinchin and Lizzy Karp in December 2009, and as of 2014 co-hosted by Karp (a marketing and
communications professional) and Cory Ashworth (past morning host of the Vancouver radio show, 102.7 The Peak, and currently writing for the Huffington Post). The stories told at Rain City Chronicles (henceforth referred to using the emic nickname, "Rain City") are supposed to be true and personal, and follow the theme that Karp and
Ashworth have chosen for the evening ("Family Matters," "Animal Instincts," etc). The mandate of Rain City, as published on the home page of its website
(raincitychronicles.com), is “to create a space for a diverse collection of Vancouverites to
share true, personal stories alongside live musical performances, inspired food and drink, and a few surprises.” From the outset, Rain City was envisioned as a place wheredisparate but locally situated people could connect.
Rain City Chronicles now takes place every few months, or whenever the
organizers – both of whom have day jobs – find the time to put a show together. Shows
are themed, and stories must be submitted to, or discussed and workshopped with, the
organizers prior to each show (see “Tell a Story” on raincitychronicles.com, where
potential storytellers are asked to give their “story pitch” in 500 words). Stories must be true, and should be tied back to the theme of the show. To ensure that stories would flow well, Pinchin created a page of “Storytelling Tips,” subtitled “Highly Required Reading For Future Storytellers” (see Appendix 3 for the full text of this document). Tips include
“don’t rant,” “keep the story under seven minutes,” “develop and practice your narrative arc,” etc. Cory Ashworth and Lizzy Karp are the careful curators of each event, ensuring that the stories are interesting, that their tellers know how to tell them, and that the line-up of stories flows well, so that (for example) two similar stories do not follow on each other's heels. It is also important to Karp that there be musical guests. Karp loves live music, and from the outset, she wanted there to be a live musical component to Rain City.
She felt that music offers exactly the kind of break the audience needs at an event like Rain City (Karp F2012).
1After listening to several stories in a row, the audience is ready for a mental break in the form of a musical interlude. For this reason, there are usually two musical guests at each Rain City event: one before the intermission, and one to close the show. In order to limit my scope, I will not be exploring the musical element of Rain City in this thesis. My focus throughout this thesis is on narratives and their performance.
1
The reference information for my interviews is listed both in the References
section, and in Appendix One: Fieldwork Sources. In Appendix One, dates are listed
using the format F2012 (2012 is the year, F is for Fieldwork). To help the reader to easily
distinguish between published sources and fieldwork sources, wherever I cite portions of
my interviews in the body text of my thesis, I will follow the format as listed in Appendix
One, e.g. (Ashworth F2013).
The story of Rain City will be elaborated in Chapter Two, but it is useful to begin with an understanding of its origins. In 2009, Karen Pinchin and Lizzy Karp – who at the time did not know each other – had independently moved to Vancouver from Ontario, and were finding it difficult to settle into the Vancouver community. To address their frustration at this relative isolation, and to connect some interesting people they had met, they decided to create a one-time event. At this event, their friends would get up on stage and tell a personal story on the theme of "Firsts," thereby getting to know one another and forming a network of interesting people. The first Rain City Chronicles was held on December 1, 2009, at Little Mountain Gallery – a small art gallery just off Main Street in Vancouver (see Fig. 1 for event poster).
Many of my informants (e.g. Amanda McCuaig, for which see McCuaig F2012) described this first Rain City Chronicles as a comfortable, living-room environment, where it seemed natural to share stories with one another. Pinchin and Karp thought it would be fun to sell tickets (five dollars apiece) and make it a public event. They put a lot of work into the venue to make it feel homey, carefully decorating the venue to make it feel more intimate, and brewing homemade apple cider. However, despite their hard work, they never expected the event to be so successful. They still marvel that by the time the show started, there was standing room only.
The first Rain City show I attended was the "Family Matters" show, at the Waldorf Hotel on March 30, 2011 (see Fig. 2 for event poster). The Waldorf is an old bar and now cultural venue in East Vancouver. As I descended into the basement, I remember
thinking "What have I got myself into?" At the bottom of the stairs was a dark, tiny
Figure 1: The first poster advertising Rain CityChronicles
theatre, where I squeezed into a folding chair in rows so close together my knees pressed
up against the seat in front of me. Before the show began, I wondered how I was going to
get through it.
Figure 1: Poster for the first Rain City show
Figure 2: Poster for the "Family Matters" show
From my seat, I took in my surroundings: white holiday lights twinkled on the ceiling; a cloth pennant looped gracefully across the stage; on stage there was a single microphone. When it was time for the show to begin, Lizzy Karp and Karen Pinchin introduced themselves as hosts of the evening. They then introduced their first storyteller – and the event had begun. At this show, I heard stories that made me laugh, and stories that made my eyes well up with tears. I heard a story of a blind man's trip to Texas for a Rattlesnake Roundup – a trip his brother had taken him on, because it would be more
“tactile” than a trip to the museum – and laughed until I cried. And then I heard a story of a man's struggle with his sexuality in the face of family pressure, realizing only
afterwards that his entire family was right there in the audience to support him. I heard a graphic story of a girl, self-proclaimed "black sheep" of the family, whose “family” in the aftermath of a recent invasive surgery had been her friends. These people bared their souls on that stage. They told an audience of strangers details that many people would not tell their own families.
The most immediate personal effect of attending Rain City was that I felt closer to
everyone around me (especially and quite literally the other audience members). I walked
away with a deepened sense of the community in Vancouver. Whereas I used to walk
through a crowd and see a crowd, now I walked through a crowd and saw hundreds of
faces with stories behind them. True stories, compelling stories – stories to make you
laugh, and stories to make you cry. Every face I looked into for months after Rain City
gave me this impression. To use a recent coinage from the Dictionary of Obscure
Sorrows (an online “compendium of invented words written by John Koenig”), I had had a “sonder.”
2When I began my master's research on Rain City, I thought I would find that others, like me, had walked away from Rain City with a more profound sense of the Vancouver community. I thought that perhaps for people less shy than I am, Rain City might be a place where people make new acquaintances. Indeed I found that for some, Rain City Chronicles has been a primary and necessary means of connecting with people. Cory Ashworth found Rain City to be an excellent place to meet new people:
That’s the other thing, is like – when I look back at when I started going to Rain City, and NOW – it’s like, literally half the storytellers that I went and saw – are obviously Lizzy’s friends – but now they’re MY friends, too, and it’s just so weird, you know? (Ashworth F2013)
However, the more I talked to past storytellers and audience members, the more it became clear to me that the majority of people I spoke with already knew each other.
Many attendees are artists, journalists, musicians, comedians, or close friends of the above. Amanda McCuaig, an artist in her early thirties, pointed out to me that the same people who attend Rain City also attend the other artistic events in the city.
The people you see at Rain City are the people you see at Talent Time, are the people you see at music shows, are the people who all go to the same
weddings…part of it is it’s a Creative Class, so we’re all sort of in the same places, so that hub is quite small. There’s 150 of us in our group, I would estimate, that I
2
Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
(The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows 2012)
see all the time. We’re in a city of 600,000 people! [laughing] Where is everyone else? (McCuaig F2012)
McCuaig’s point has led me to realize that while a Rain City show is a good evening to hear true stories from interesting people, it is not necessarily a venue for expanding one's own community or circle of friends. Rather, it is a venue for an existing network – the "Creative Class" of Vancouver (the term McCuaig used to describe her social group, before verbally citing Florida 2002 to me)– to get together and catch up with one another. My initial research question, then ("how does attending a Rain City show affect people’s experience of the wider Vancouver community?") did not grab the
imaginations of my informants. Instead, we spent a good deal of time talking about what makes a “good story,” and what makes the Rain City experience so special. These concerns became a focus for this thesis.
My primary research question has since become: what exactly is a Rain City narrative? Beyond classifying it as a “personal narrative,” how can I classify it as a folkloric genre?
The Personal Experience Narrative genre
According to Sandra Dolby, one of the foremost scholars on personal experience
narrative, the personal experience narrative (here often referred to as the “personal
narrative”) is “a prose narrative relating a personal experience, usually told in the first
person, and containing non-traditional content. . . based on an actual event” (Dolby 1996,
556-7). That is to say, personal experience narratives (as distinct from folktales, for
example) depict events that actually happened in the lived experience of the teller. These
events may include
an amusing incident from the teller’s childhood, a school or work experience, a once-embarrassing social mishap that time has turned into a humorous faux pas, perhaps an encounter with the supernatural or unexplainable, or maybe a painful lesson in the proverbial school of hard knocks. (Dolby 1983, 268)
Indeed, these are the topics explored by Rain City storytellers.
Nevertheless, according to Randal Allison, personal experience narratives are
“consciously constructed” and “follow accepted norms for traditional performance, such as form, function, or style” (Allison 1997). Personal experience narratives report single events, are usually secular, and serve one of three functions: to entertain, to warn, and to present some aspect of the storyteller’s character or personal values (Dolby 1996, 557).
As I discuss later in this thesis, one of the main functions of a Rain City narrative is entertainment. However, many stories also function as warnings – for instance, a warning never to turn one’s back on a frightened bear (8-Buchanan P2012), or a reminder to ask questions before moving into a heritage building (7-O’Neill P2012).
3Even these warnings, however, are presented in a humorous light.
One additional function performed by Rain City narratives is discussed in Chapter Five: Rain City narratives help audience members to feel seen and understood, merely through the honest recounting of lived experience. In this way, the personal narratives told at Rain City encourage the audience to relate to the storyteller, and vice versa. This often unspoken dialogue between audience and storyteller creates a sense of connection that is very valuable to Vancouverites in their twenties and thirties (see Chapter Two).
3 Appendix Two gives a comprehensive list of podcast titles, dates, and storytellers. In
what follows, the citation “(7-Johannesen P2012)” refers the reader to Appendix Three,
Item #7 (Under the Influence, June 29, 2012), Shauna Johannesen. I have prefixed the
date, in this case 2012, with the letter P, to indicate “Podcast material.” I hope that this
will help the reader to more easily distinguish between secondary sources (2012), primary
fieldwork materials (F2012), and podcast materials (P2012).
In fact, Sandra Dolby notes that “perhaps the most telling function [of personal narratives] is that they invite intimacy, a chance for the teller and the listener to know each other better” (Dolby 1996, 558). While the storyteller’s sense of humor can protect him or her (a phenomenon we return to in Chapter Four), the storyteller may be speaking from an emotionally vulnerable place (Dolby 1983, 274). It is this emotional
vulnerability that makes the personal narrative so inviting and engaging: “The
conventions of the story make self-revelation acceptable and entertaining, but the courage of the storyteller in articulating usually covert values makes the storytelling an engaging experience” (Dolby 1983, 274).
Prior to the work of Dolby, the personal experience narrative was largely ignored as a folkloric genre, seen as less “traditional” than the other folklore genres, and less
pertinent to a study of “the folk.” From the late 1970s to the 1990s (see Dolby 1977;
Dolby 1983; Dolby 1989; Dolby 1996), Sandra Dolby argued that “the form, style, and function of such stories are consistent from story to the next. Thus, one can argue that the genre itself is traditional” (Dolby 1996, 557). Allison adds that “few other forms of narrative expression can provide the same depth of revelation of the social life of a community as can the personal experience narratives of its members” (Allison 1997, 636). Furthermore, “as performances, these narratives reflect what is important to the group in terms of performance style, narrative content, and social concerns and norms of the group” (Allison 1997, 636). Dolby would agree, noting that “ethical values, personal goals and hopes, dominant themes and guiding principles – all of these covert but
dynamic forces are hidden in these unassuming, everyday tales” (Dolby 1983, 275). I am
fortunate to be writing this thesis at a time when I do not have to defend my attention to
this valuable genre – a genre that can be performed by any group member and which reveals
more of the day-to-day realities of group standards than other traditional narrative forms in that they are drawn from (or at least alleged to be drawn from) the real experiences of their performers in the present, rather than from the near or distant past life of the group or its legendary figures. (Allison 1997, 637)
In addition to its own content and functions, the personal narrative also has its own form. In Chapter Three, I discuss and expand on the significant contributions of another important scholar, William Labov, to our understanding and close analysis of the personal narrative form. For now, suffice it to say that the personal narrative form is distinguished by the following four elements:
1. Use of standardized opening / closing phrases
2. A setting or frame for the story (Labov’s “abstract” [see Labov 2013, 27]) 3. A moral (or in some cases Labov’s “coda” [see Labov 2013, 32])
4. Humor.
The Contemporary Legend genre
Later in this thesis, I will suggest that the personal narratives told at Rain City are similar in form and function to the contemporary legend genre. Consequently, the contemporary legend genre deserves some attention here. In what follows, I summarize the overview of contemporary legend research presented in Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith’s Contemporary Legend: A Reader.
Contemporary legends have been a subject of folkloristic analysis since at least the
mid-1800s in Britain (Bennett and Smith 1996, xxiv). In the early 1900s, scholars began
to notice a “new” folk narrative, which by the 1930s was widely known as “newspaper
folklore” (xxvi). Indeed, also in the 1930s, Alexander Woollcott published a “Shouts and Murmurs” column in The New Yorker – a column featuring an “almost endless stream of supernatural, bizarre and humorous narratives” (xxvi). Woolcott noticed that certain narratives, such as the “Vanishing Lady” story, were told by many different people in different places. He noted that each teller believed the story to be true, and claimed to have heard it from a friend of a friend (xxvii-xxviii).
Stith Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk Literature appeared in 1932, and included motifs that have since been recognized in contemporary legends. These included G60
“Human flesh eaten unwillingly” and N334 “Accidental fatal ending of game or joke”
(Bennett and Smith xxix). Motif E332.3.3.1, “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” appeared in the revised index in 1958.
Throughout the 1960s, scholars added to the list of story motifs. In 1971, Linda Dégh argued that contemporary legends are in fact “traditional” insofar as they “reflect age-old concerns” (Bennett and Smith xxxi, summarizing Dégh 1971). The thrust of Dégh’s argument, as summarized by Bennett and Smith, was that “the heart of a legend is belief, not text, and therefore esthetic considerations should not be a criterion by which it is judged” (Bennett and Smith xxxi). Bennett and Smith call Dégh’s essay – entitled
“The ‘belief legend’ in modern society: Form, function, and relationship to other genres”
– “the single most decisive contribution in defining contemporary legend for that generation of scholars” (xxxi).
Also in 1971, Alan Dundes presented his paper, “On the Psychology of Legend.”
Dundes called on scholars to focus more on the modes and purposes of legend
transmission than on the collection and classification of motifs (Dundes 1971). Dundes
challenged the academic community to determine the significance and relevance of contemporary legend “with respect to the ultimate goal of understanding the nature of man” (Dundes 1971, 21).
In 1981, Jan Harold Brunvand published The Vanishing Hitchhiker, which was widely read by scholars and the public alike. Soon afterwards, the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) was founded. Since the 1980s, there has been an “explosion in the number of legend anthologies” (Bennett and Smith xxxv).
In 1998, Jan Harold Brunvand defined legends as “stories regarded by their tellers as true…[They are] generally secular and are set in the less remote past in a conventional earthly locale” (Brunvand 1998, 196). He accounted for the popularity of what he calls
“urban legends” by listing the following three elements: a suspenseful and humorous storyline, an element of actual belief, and a warning or moral (205). Incidentally, in my research on Rain City, all three of these factors were listed by at least one informant as being factors that contribute to a “good story.”
Bennett and Smith note that around 1990, the folklorists, anthropologists, and
psychologists already studying contemporary legend were joined by sociologists
interested in collective behavior (xxxvi). The sociologists brought with them new
approaches to contemporary legend, especially social functionalism (xxxvii). Since that
time, there has been a fundamental divide in the contemporary legend scholarship
between those who are primarily interested in the history and narrative features of the
legend, and those who are primarily interested in the belief element – those who look for
social/psychological meanings and contexts (xxvii-xxviii). In this thesis, I explore
perspectives from both sides of the divide, since my informants indicated to me that Rain
City narratives are distinguished both by their narrative elements and by an element of truth or belief.
According to Paul Smith, contemporary legends are
Primarily nonsupernatural, secular narratives that are set in the real world. Told as if they happened recently, they focus on ordinary individuals in familiar places, and they portray situations that are perceived as important by the narrators and listeners alike – situations that the performers and their audiences may have experienced, are currently experiencing, or could possibly experience. As such, they describe plausible, ordinary situations and events, although often with an unusual twist.
(Smith 1997, 493)
Smith adds that some common themes include warnings, accidents, pleasant surprises, embarrassing situations, and out-of-luck stories – all themes explored at Rain City (Smith 1997, 494). Furthermore, contemporary legends are presented as being true stories, and Smith contends that some may in fact be true – “not necessarily literally true but containing a truth that comes from typifying life in the current century” (Smith 1997, 494). Whatever the case, truth is actively negotiated by tellers and listeners, who either support the narrator’s statement of belief or reject it. Contemporary legends serve multiple functions, including the delivery of moral messages, and the justification of
“why we behave in particular ways in certain situations” (Smith 1997, 494). Finally, contemporary legends “allow us to express our fears, provide commentary and
explanations of abnormal situations or strange behavior, or warn against involvement in particular types of situations” (Smith 1997, 494). All of the above characteristics of the contemporary legend can be applied to the Rain City personal narratives.
Before I continue, I must introduce, explore, and define one further term that arises in my analysis. The term is “authenticity.” Because my informants used words like
“authentic” and “real” in their interviews, and because the “authenticity” of a storyteller
was very important to the Rain City audience, this term has become significant enough for me to explore it in lengthy and careful detail. In so doing, I demonstrate my
understanding that “authenticity” is not a straightforward word, nor a throwaway word, but rather a word with a long, fraught history. I use the term consciously in my analysis.
Authenticity: Not a folklorist’s favorite word
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word is derived from the ancient Greek αὐθέντης (authentes), meaning generally "perpetrator," "author" or "doer," with the strong connotation of "murderer" (Liddell and Scott 1940). Liddell and Scott had earlier defined αὐθέντης as "one who does anything with his own hand" (Liddell and Scott 1889).
From the same root as αὐθέντης comes αὐθεντία (authentia), also relevant for our purposes according to the OED. Aὐθεντία denotes "absolute sway, authority" (Liddell and Scott 1940). Words in the ancient Greek lexicon beginning with the same root (αὐθεντ-) convey a similar meaning – consider αὐθεντικός (authentikos – warranted, principal, authoritative) and αὐθεντέω (authenteo – to have full power or authority over).
It is interesting to note that many of the words cited by the OED as ancestral to our
"authenticity" are derived from legal documents with a concern for "authentication."
However, a study of the Greek lexicon reveals several other words beginning with the
root αὐθ- which come closer to the meaning which I (and my informants at Rain City)
attach to the word. Consider αὐθοµολογέοµαι (authomologeomai – to confess of oneself),
αὐθοµολογούµενον (authomologoumenon – a thing that speaks for itself), αὐθάγιος(authagios – absolutely holy). This of course is no justification for using the word this
way in the discussion to follow, for naturally the only version of the word worthy of discussion here is the one arising from the Rain City context. However, one wonders how much of the sense of the word the OED has lost by its focus on the written historical record.
From the Greek was derived the Latin authenticus, used in the 2nd century AD to denote documents that were "original." By the 3rd century AD, Tertullian used the term to denote something that was "true."
During the Middle Ages there arose a concern in the Christian world for relics – objects of veneration that supposedly had some direct link to a holy person. It was very important to know that these objects be "authentic" in order to believe that they were imbued with supernatural powers (for example the power to heal). If the holiness of an object was questioned, the Holy See could check records to find "Incontrovertible official validation of sacred status," based partly on the known origins of the object, and partly on the miracles the object had performed in the past (Lindholm 2008, 14-15).
By the 12th century the word authenticus could denote something authoritative or legally valid. From this Latin sense came the concurrent Middle French autentique and Anglo-Norman autentique (authoritative, especially with reference to a legal document).
By 1375 or so, we find that not only a thing, but also a person can be referred to in English as authentic – that is to say, legally or duly qualified, or in some other way
"genuine."
In the 18th and 19th centuries, with the expansion of print culture and
mechanically-produced goods, consumers began to value goods that were unique –
seemingly more genuine, more wholesome, more connected to a particular artist (Milnes
and Sinanan 2010, 2-3; Lodge 2010, 185). This concern with origins persists in the art world today: "Authentic art objects are original, real, and pure; they are what they purport to be, their provenance and authorship are known and verified, their essence and
appearance are one" (Lindholm 2008, 16).
At the same time, a group of philosophers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712- 1778) and the theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) developed the notion that not only were pre-industrial goods more pure and real, but so were pre-industrial people. This notion extended to children and “primitive” people – people who seemed more in touch with their inner emotional lives. Rousseau believed that you were only living if you were directly experiencing authentic feeling (Lindholm 2008, 8), and thus perceived emotional rawness of children and "primitive" cultural groups to be a sign of their pure, primal, and thereby superior being. According to anthropologist Charles Lindholm, "Rousseau's Confessions were the harbinger of a new ideal in which exploring and revealing one's essential nature was taken as an absolute good, even if this meant flying in the face of the moral standards of society" (Lindholm 2008, 8).
For his own part, Herder favored art, particularly poetry, which seemed to spring from this "natural" place. He called such poetry Naturpoesie, and identified
Empfindsamkeit (responsiveness to sentiment) as being exemplified by the "folk" (Bendix
1997, 29). Herder certainly condescended to the folk, but he admired them; he was not
anti-Semitic and he would sooner celebrate an ethnic minority than subdue it. Indeed, at
one time Herder wrote, "National pride is absurd, ridiculous, and harmful. But love for
one's nation is duty for everyone" (Herder 1877-1913, 32:519; translation by Regina
Bendix [Bendix 1997, 41]). Herder was interested in various groups which he perceived
to be more authentic than European city culture. These included the Hindu people of India (Herder was responsible for an orientalised Romantic vision of India at this time) and especially the more pastoral people of his own country, Germany (Bendix 1997, 35).
In the early nineteenth century, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1787-1859) Grimm began traveling around Germany collecting Märchen – fairy tales – from these pastoral people: stories which they felt were innocent, pure, and authentically German (Bendix 1997, 51). "[The Grimms] searched for an authenticity lodged in the past that would nourish and educate their compatriots' present and future with the purity of a German spirit of the past" (Bendix 1997, 59-60). Notably, the Grimms were interested in uncovering an "anonymous or collective authenticity" as opposed to an individual, authorial one (Bendix 1997, 67).
By the mid-20th century, in what Lionel Trilling has called the "great refusal of human connection" (Trilling 1974, 71), existentialist philosophers Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) took authenticity on a sharp introspective turn. Heidegger felt that people were stuck in an "everyday feeling" (Alltaglichkeit) which prevented them from living a life of sensitivity in what he called eigentlichkeit (loosely translated as "own feeling") (Bendix 1997, 18). Sartre felt that his adult struggle to become "civilized" had betrayed his true inner self, and so he turned inwards to explore his being. These ideas of authenticity are so personal as to be asocial, and have been criticized for causing adherents to withdraw from society (Bendix 1997, 19).
Unfortunately, by the mid-1900s, some thinkers on authenticity (such as Heidegger,
himself a member of the Nazi Party who did not practice what he preached) looked
further back, becoming narrowly and overly fixated on Herder's concept of the national
"authentic," as well as its inferred opposite: the inauthentic. Lindholm has pointed out that "through participation in the united congregation," the nation-state can provide humanity with potent feelings of transcendence and deeper reality (Lindholm 2008, 98- 99). However, "[a]ssertion of a primordial authenticity of blood has provided the rationale for nationalistic, ethnic, racial, religious, or tribal anti-modernist and anti- universalistic social movements everywhere, often with dire consequences" (Lindholm 2008, 111). Herder had long before warned of the dangers of nationalism, and sure enough, by the 1930s in Germany, nationalism had become a serious issue. Certain individuals, it was argued, did not fit into the image of Germany's "pure" and "authentic"
past, and would have to be removed if Germany was to return to its supposedly "pure"
state (Lindholm 2008, 102-103). This unwelcome crowd included immigrant ethnic minorities, such as the Jewish people, who were systematically rooted out and
exterminated. What seems to us now the coldest and most horrible of crimes must have seemed at one time a reasonable method of returning a nation to an "authentic" state. And it is largely because of the role that folklore played in this crime that the word
"authenticity" is so loaded and so painful to our discipline today.
Thus have I come to understand that the "authentic" has been used by various
people at various times to gain power and cause pain. When I made my first academic
lunge into folklore studies, however, I was unaware of the baggage of this concept. I had
only ever thought of the "real" or "authentic" as a word denoting intense feeling – the
feeling that you are in touch with something larger than yourself, and yet something so
intimate and personal as to make you feel you have identity and belonging just by
grasping it. Bendix calls this a "quality of experience" that includes "the chills running
down one's spine during musical performances. . .moments that may stir one to tears, laughter, elation. . ." (Bendix 1997, 13). I believe that it is in this very experiential sense that my informants at Rain City Chronicles understand the "authentic" – the "real," the
"genuine," the "true." Where I use these words, I use them in full understanding of their baggage, and yet I intend to reclaim them. For the experience that these words denote, and the beautiful things that can happen in pursuit of them, must be explored, and must be explored by folklore studies. "The greatest strength of folklore studies is the perennial finger they hold to the pulse of what human beings, through their expressive culture, crave or fear most deeply" (Bendix 1997, 21). I pursue the authentic as honestly as I believe many before me have pursued it, and I hope that the following discussion can help to redefine and reclaim a loaded word still in popular use today.
Authenticity: Current Understandings
Many have tried to define authenticity in terms of its history; others explore authenticity in terms of the desires that motivate people to seek it. In Culture and authenticity, Lindholm traces the origins of the modern sense of the word, thus trying to pin down what authenticity is (see above), while also noting what authenticity does:
"Authenticity gathers people together in collectives that are felt to be real, essential, and vital, providing participants with meaning, unity, and a surpassing sense of belonging"
(Lindholm 2008, 1). This, surely, is the more productive approach to the topic; after all,
Bendix states, "the crucial questions to be answered are not, 'what is authenticity?' but
'who needs authenticity and why?' and 'how has authenticity been used?'" (Bendix 1997,
21). Lindholm notes that throughout history and across cultures, human beings "have
sought refuge and inspiration in their own pursuits of authentic being" (Lindholm 2008, 2), and Bendix agrees that "the search for authenticity is fundamentally an emotional and moral quest" (Bendix 1997, 7). This pursuit can become dangerous, when, desperate for
"real feeling," a person takes personal risks such as sky diving, white-water rafting, or unprotected sex with an exotic stranger (Lindholm 2008, 47). In short, the pursuit of authenticity is not merely a theoretical academic question; it is also a widely felt human desire, and therefore worthy of attention.
Lindholm presents an interesting case study of the importance of authenticity to a significant portion of Canada's population: country music fans. In order to be perceived as "authentic," successful country artists have to
play live music and entertain their audiences in person. . .give revealing and intimate interviews. . .and make themselves readily available to their fans. Ideally, to show they are not snobs, they should speak with rural accents, keep their
vocabulary and grammar simple, and talk openly about their personal tribulations.
[. . .] The atmosphere of an authentic country performance is informal and celebratory. (Lindholm 2008, 36)
For a country music fan, this is "real music about real life for real people"
(Lindholm 2008, 29) – this is the stuff of life, the modern Rousseauian confession, the real hard truth. In this way, country music is like a Rain City show. Never mind how much forethought, expertise, and practice the artist has put in before the performance (Lindholm 2008, 37); what is important is that the audience feels like the performer is being spontaneous with them – just being themselves. "It is characteristic of
contemporary conversation that we tend to place a value on self-revelation. We haven't
had a satisfying conversation unless we've gotten 'something personal'" (Todd 2008, 171).
Jerry Pocius has argued that the study of authenticity "is a middle-class intellectual issue that has little relevance in much day-to-day life of ordinary working-class people"
(Pocius 2005, 344). Moreover, he states that "for many we talk to, there is little concern with separating the authentic from the fake; instead, the fake and the real exist
simultaneously, and people finally pay little attention to whether they are witnessing something that is genuine or spurious" (Pocius 2005, 344). I believe Pocius is absolutely right: most people do not care. It is normal and unproblematic for a WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) spectator to know the fight is fixed (therefore “fake”) and yet simultaneously to feel that he/she is watching something "real" (real injuries, blood, etc) (Pocius 2005, 350). Knowing that the fight is fixed does not take away from the
entertainment value of a wrestling match. However, for the young professionals who attend Rain City – for instance members of the radio-journalism community –
authenticity matters. Stories that come across as impersonal or untrue disrupt the flow of the event. A story that does not come across as "real" creates an awkward hole in the evening, and does not make the cut when it comes to choosing which stories to include in the podcast.
However, there are boundaries to how “real” a storyteller should be. During my interview with Karen Pinchin, she described a performance that was very real in terms of the feelings expressed by the storyteller, but was also racist and made no attempt to connect to the audience (Pinchin F2012).
Clearly, then, the type of authenticity that Rain City is looking for is more than
simply the unloading of one’s personal thoughts and feelings on stage. Instead, Rain City
is looking for something more – something that connects the audience to the storyteller.
The storyteller is meant to tell a personal experience narrative – something “true” and
“real” that comes from his or her lived experience. The goal of Rain City is to connect audience members and storytellers through the medium of shared experience.
Pocius argues that "if we as folklorists hope to understand the dynamics of ordinary everyday contemporary life, then we must begin to move beyond the issue of constructed authenticity once and for all" (Pocius 2005, 361). I return, however, that in the case of an extra-ordinary middle-class event, the concept of authenticity remains relevant – indeed, when asked to describe a "good" Rain City story, many of my informants used words like
"real" and "true." Pocius does allow that "people know some parts may be accurate, some reproductions, some inventions, some improvisations. But in the end, it is the experience, the impact that counts" (Pocius 2005, 359). I could not agree more. For my purposes, and for the purposes of my informants at Rain City, the term “authenticity” is central to the understanding of just what is going on at a Rain City show. For the Rain City audience, there is a felt difference between an “authentic” and an “inauthentic”
performance. An authentic performance has a greater impact. Authenticity matters to the experience of my informants, and so for the purposes of the following analysis, it matters to me.
Methodology
I began writing this thesis as a graduate student at Memorial University in St.
John's, NL. I knew that I could be in Vancouver – would have direct experience with
Rain City – only during the summer, in between semesters of course work. Sure enough,
the summer of 2012 was my only chance to go back to Vancouver and interview
participants in Rain City. I was able to attend two live Rain City shows, and interview thirteen participants of Rain City. I knew I would be attending the "Under the Influence"
show in June 2012, and was hoping to be able to interview audience members during the intermission and after the show.
In the spring of 2012, before applying for ethics clearance with ICEHR (the
Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research) at Memorial University, I
called both Karen Pinchin and Lizzy Karp (co-founders and then co-hosts of Rain City
Chronicles) to make sure that they were on board with my research ideas. They
expressed their interest in the project. However, they were not keen on the idea of me
announcing my presence as a researcher at a live Rain City event. In a telephone
conversation with me, Pinchin expressed her concern that having a known researcher in
the room might affect the comfortable atmosphere that she and Karp have fostered. She
felt – and I agreed – that knowing there was a researcher in the room might change the
way storytellers presented themselves, or the types of details they shared. We agreed that
I would proceed by discreet participant observation, and by conducting interviews outside
of the event itself. This limited my scope – I would have liked to interview audience
members at the event itself, to ask them how they found out about Rain City, and what
they thought of the event. In the end, I tracked down past storytellers by scouring the
Internet for contact information and emailing each of them with a description of my
project and an expression of my interest to interview them. There is considerable material
here for ample discussion and analysis – not only were my interviews quite lengthy, but I
have subsequently completed an in-depth analysis of the podcasts released by Rain City,
which has given me a strong sense of the Rain City aesthetic.
I applied for and was granted ICEHR (Interdisciplinary Committee for Ethics in Human Research) clearance in May 2012, at which time I was also awarded a Joseph- Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) to pursue my research on Rain City. In June, I flew back to Vancouver and began to schedule interviews, most of which took place between June and August 2012.
Ten of my informants were past storytellers who had replied to my emails; one (Kevin Cherney) was an audience member, to whom I was referred by Karp; two (Karen Pinchin and Lizzy Karp) were the original hosts of the event; and one (Cory Ashworth, a past storyteller) had since become a co-host of the event. My interviews took place in various locations all over Vancouver – wherever was both convenient for my informants and relatively quiet for the sake of my voice recorder (a Roland R-05 WAV/MP3
recorder). I found myself in many kinds of locations: heritage houses, apartments, restaurants, coffee shops on Main Street, and once, an open-air deli right next to the train tracks with unforeseen trains and helicopters screaming by. By necessity, I also
conducted a couple of interviews over Skype. One of these (with Ashworth) went smoothly, although we could not get the video function to work; the other (with Kaitlin Fontana, who was living in New York City) was quite rocky, likely due to a poor Internet connection. Nevertheless, despite some unforeseen challenges (the helicopters were the worst), my interviews were a joy to conduct and I learned a great deal from the intelligent individuals who agreed to speak with me.
I began my interviews by asking my informants how they felt about the sense of
community in Vancouver. I then moved on to ask about their specific experiences of
Rain City Chronicles, and finished by asking for their opinions of what makes a "good story." As mentioned above, my questions were guided by my own personal experience of Rain City, which had made me feel differently about the Vancouver community as a whole. However, I discovered through speaking with my informants that most of them considered attending Rain City to be a special but not paradigm-shifting way to spend an evening. Most of my informants felt the same about Vancouver before and after
attending Rain City. Additionally, many of my informants already knew each other, or were part of roughly similar social circles, and I found that they did not attend Rain City in order to meet new people. Nevertheless, my informants were universally thoughtful, intelligent people who not only took my questions seriously and applied their own thoughtful analysis to my subject matter, but also contributed many of their own insights which inspired me along the way. So as I sat down, in fall 2012 and spring 2013, to listen through my interviews once more, I found myself reconsidering my research questions.
At this point, it may be noted that I was worn out academically and took a leave of absence for one year, during which I wrote down occasional ideas on Rain City, but otherwise took a complete mental break. What I noticed, as I let thoughts on Rain City percolate under no pressure to write about them, was that I was very much interested in the ideas of truth and authenticity that my informants had raised. It seemed that although their experiences of Rain City had differed, they shared a sense that Rain City stories should be “true” and “real.” The importance of “authenticity” is explored in detail later in this chapter.
This thesis was largely written in the summer of 2014. After returning to my
research, I completed an in-depth analysis of the Rain City Chronicles podcasts, which at
the time included 52 stories and will be discussed in detail in Chapter Three. My review of the published literature took me from literature on tale and legend (Dundes 1999, Fine 1992, Lunt 1969, Mullen 1998, Olrik 1999, Propp 1999, and Thomas 1977) to literature on truth and authenticity (Bendix 1997, Lindholm 2008, Milnes and Sinanan 2010, and Pocius 2005), autobiography (Langness and Frank 1981, Peneff 1990, Samuel and Thompson 1990, Sawin 2004, and Tonkin 1990), belonging (Pocius 2000), linguistics (Bennett 1990), and even tourism (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, Qureshi 2011, Tuan 2007). I found that to understand Rain City Chronicles I must approach it from many diverse angles. In the pages that follow, I have painted a portrait of Rain City that both demonstrates its complexity and does justice to its simple mission: to create a comfortable space for people to share their stories.
I have begun by introducing you to the characters, the setting of my story
(Vancouver, BC), and my own position as narrator (via my methodology and personal connection to the subject). In Chapter Two: "Setting the Stage," I look at the
geographical and social context of Rain City, in order to show that its genesis in
Vancouver was no accident. I discuss Rain City’s beginnings, which are entwined with the stories of its founders, and follow its trials and successes over the past five years. In Chapter Three: “A Good Story: Podcast Analysis,” I analyze the Rain City stories made available via podcast in order to determine some basic narrative elements of the Rain City personal narrative genre. In Chapter Four: "A Good Story: The Folk Aesthetic," I
investigate my informants’ assessment of what makes a “good story,” specifically a good
Rain City story. I conclude that the personal narratives told at Rain City most closely
resemble contemporary legends, and should be classified as such. In Chapter Five:
“Personal Voice, Constructed Identity, and Being Heard,” I discuss the ways in which
Rain City has impacted its storytellers. To conclude, I hint at the implications of Rain
City's success, not only for Rain City itself, but also for the Vancouver community, and
for the future of personal storytelling shows.
Chapter Two: "If it doesn't exist, create it"
Vancouver is a large coastal city of 603,502 people, located between the ocean and the mountains of the lower mainland of British Columbia (City of Vancouver 2014). It is divided into many distinct neighborhoods (see City of Vancouver 2014 for a list), in some cases by bodies of water, and in others, by differences in income and architecture.
Downtown Vancouver, for instance, is a bustling neighborhood composed of shiny modern high-rises (both residential and business), and populated by both the very rich (in the buildings) and the very poor (on the streets). Kitsilano is a quiet, wealthy
neighborhood across the water from Downtown, and close to the University of British Columbia. In Kitsilano, homes are small and expensive, and, judging by the grocery stores and restaurants in the area, most residents prefer to eat organic food. Commercial Drive, in East Vancouver, is an ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood, very supportive of small local businesses and alternative eating habits. It has become a hotspot for young adults seeking an edgy, alternative lifestyle, and housing prices there are on the rise. These are only three of Vancouver’s many neighborhoods – there are many more.
Each neighborhood has a distinct character set apart by its distinct architecture, and overall, the diversity of Vancouver’s neighborhoods is a point of pride. According to the city’s website, “the City values that diversity as a source of creativity and strength” (City of Vancouver 2014).
Despite this assertion, however, many of my informants felt that Vancouver is
fragmented by its separate neighborhoods – that it is difficult to experience Vancouver as
a cohesive unit unless you ride your bike or walk everywhere (this was noted by my
informant Sara Bynoe F2012). By walking or biking instead of taking public transit or driving their cars, some of my informants feel that they are able to connect the different neighborhoods of Vancouver with each other – to make a mental map and begin to develop a sense of place. For those who commute by personal vehicle or by public transit, however, the city can feel like a series of pockets.
In 2011, Vancouver Foundation
4– a community foundation and granting agency which funds hundreds of community-directed projects every year in BC – conducted a poll among various community builders and charitable organizations to try to pin down "a specific, community-identified challenge" to target in the city of Vancouver. "The intent was to help us decide where to focus additional energy and resources to have a greater impact in the community" (Vancouver Foundation June 2012, 3). Vancouver Foundation expected the dominant issue to be homelessness and poverty (3). However, the issue that rose to the surface was "a growing sense of isolation and disconnection…a deepening civic malaise that has resulted in more people retreating from community activities. . . . [Citizens of Vancouver] said this corrosion of caring and social isolation hurts them personally and hurts their community" (3).
Following this discovery, Vancouver Foundation asked for another survey
(conducted by Sentis Market Research) which would ask questions about three levels of connection: personal friendships, neighborhoods, and attitudes toward the larger
community of Vancouver. The survey also asked questions about community
participation and asked what prevents individuals from being more engaged (5). This survey took place in the spring of 2012, and made some interesting discoveries.
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